I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: GREEN DAY-21st Century Breakdown (2009).

Like most people who like Green Day, I’ve been a fan since Dookie.  They were incredibly poppy (although they wrote great punk riffs) and they sang about weird, kind of subversive things.  And they got huge really fast.  Of course since then they have become one of the most commercially successful bands in America (including having their song picked for the ending scene of the Seinfeld montage–jeez).

And yet….

And yet, American Idiot, their previous album was one of  the most anti-establishment records of the last twenty years. (True it’s not hard to be Anti-Bush if you’re a punk band, but wow.)  And yet, it was a concept album and even a rock opera of sorts.  And it still sold millions.

And now American Idiot has been made into a freaking Broadway Musical.  And yet, how many Broadway shows (or top twenty albums for that matter) have lyrics like “The insurgency will rise when the blood’s been sacrificed.  Don’t be blinded by the lies in your eyes”

And so Green Day confounds me.  And yet, if I were younger and cared more about “keeping it real” I think they’d confuse me even more because although musically they have sold out (if you want to call it that), lyrically Billie Joe is still pretty true to his punk roots.  And, of course, even the punkest bands seem to go commercial eventually (Combat Rock anyone?)

Of all the Green Day CD’s I think I like this least.  And yet I really applaud them for writing an album that so easily translates to Broadway (not an easy feat in itself) (this disc would make better Broadway than American Idiot).  I think I dislike this disc not because it’s so unpunk, but because I think musically it’s really obvious (and although I like musicals, I prefer classic musicals to contemporary ones).  And yet, most of Green Day’s music is pretty obvious.  I guess I prefer my obvious music to have a harder egde.

And yet Act III is full of some really great aggressive punk songs: “Horseshoes and Handgrenades” is just fantastic.  And in Act II, “Peacemaker has a great construction, all spaghetti Western and whatnot.  And in the first act, the title song has multiple parts that all work well together.  It’s a pretty sophisticated song.  And who can fault Billie Joe for expanding his songwriting skills?  Like the Tin Pan Alleyesque opening of “¿Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl).”

In interviews, Billie Joe comes across as a maturing artist who is influenced by more diverse styles of music.  I always wonder what the other two guys think.  Should your name still be Tre Cool if you’re no longer writing songs about getting high and masturbating?

And yet…and yet…ad astra.

[READ: Week of June 18, 2010] Letters of Insurgents [Second Letters]

There’s been a lot of discussion over at Insurgent Summer (and here) about the first week’s reading.  Very exciting!  And with so much revealed and so many accusations flying this week, no doubt more will continue.

Many people have been wondering exactly what Yarostan could have meant in first letter when he said he barely remembered Sophia.  When he replies in this letter, he claims that “I now remember you as if I had been with you only yesterday” (29).  There are two ways to take this: first, as a positive; however, it can also be read as the way I take it: Oh, RIGHT, you’re THAT person, still.  And this is pretty well confirmed by the second paragraph: “I admit that I once shared the illusion your letter celebrates” (29).

This letter is the first time we see the real Yarostan.  While, certainly that first one was Yarostan, he didn’t reveal much of himself in it.  It’s an exploratory letter.  But here we learn exactly what he’s about.

I don’t know if this will come out later, or if anyone knows for sure: is this first incident that he describes real or not.  He and Sophia joined a group of prisoners and “were helping them dig the mass grave into which they were being thrown after they were shot” (29).  He  says that they were “like children who saw a group of people digging in a field and ran to join them”  (29).  So, is this a simile or was it real?  If it’s real, how could Sophia block it out?  If it’s a simile (which I suspect it is) it’s awfully heavy-handed, no?

And so just as Sophia is disappointed in Yarostan, so is he disappointed in Sophia, and even more so in Luisa.  And once again, Sabina is thrown into stark relief as the only one who understood what was happening.

However, because we don’t know (and will we ever?) the real events, we must rely on both of their memories and try to decide who is right.  But regardless, Yarostan’s opening salvo is pretty condescending, “Could it be that what you describe as our common experience was only partly a real event and mainly your own invention?” (30).  Yarostan also admits that he is “seeing people and events that [he had] warded off for two decades” (30), so can his memory be all that reliable?

We shall see, but first we’ll get Yarostan’s history:

Yarostan’s parents were taken away for being Jewish, and as a result he also felt the stain that he saw on his parents.  Although his neighbors offered to take him in, he quickly left this “home town” and never looked back.  When he arrived in the new town, he made camp in the store room of a factory and became an excellent thief.  He was caught (sleeping in the factory, not stealing) and although he was threatened with the police, a worker (who was Titus Zabran) said he was a friend and was there to start working that very day.   He also met Jasna Zbrkova there.  Titus and his friends took him in, fed him and begged him to stop stealing and take the job at the factory.

He took the job and even attended their rallies.  They argued with each other, but despite shouts of revolution and liberation, “they seemed like exotic merchants screeching and tearing each others’ hair because one had cheated the other in a transaction that had taken place years ago in a different part of the world” (33).  And even though he later joined the arguments, “in retrospect I consider my first reaction to be the healthier one” (33).

Now we know where he’s coming from.

He was 15 when Titus introduced him to Sophia (aged about 12)  and Luisa (late 20s), and even back then they did not follow “mother/daughter” conventions of any kind.   He had “never before experienced such a total absence of authority in relations between children and adults” (31).  And this scene was entrancing to Yarotsan.

And yet despite a fledgling crush on Luisa (for surely that is what he felt), Yarostan was aware that everything she said couldn’t have been accurate: “I knew then as clearly as I know now that the two events had nothing in common….  [but] to Luisa they had everything in common” (31).  During the revolution, Yarostan took up weapons.  He shot and killed people–he wanted revenge.  “At first I shot to avenge my parents.  Later I just shot: my only concern was to hit” (34).  But meeting Luisa helped him forget that.  Her discussions focused on the victory: the army was defeated.  But if it was  victory, why is everything now as bad as it was then?

In prison, he met a man named Manuel (whom Sophia and Luisa think is a straw man).  Manuel recounted the days of the revolution in strikingly different terms than what Luisa had convinced him were the truth.  Yarostan states that the “very language [Luisa] used falsified the real events and replaced them with stories that were profound, complete and edifying only because they were myths” (36).  And, speaking of myths, Yarostan, “didn’t for a moment believe that….they were going to invent new modes of transportation, dream up new ways to relate to each other, to our activity, to our environment” (37).

And what of Sophia?  What of her memory?  “If we fought to liberate the city, why didn’t we turn our guns on the new occupiers?” (37).  And, more to the point, she said that “no outside force denied our project,” but “An“outside force”did in fact define your project and make your decisions.  It was none other than the politicians who three years earlier had helped clear away one army in order to make room for another” (38).

Yarostan feels that they were all puppets in the politicians’ play.  They did what they were scripted to do.   It was only after the proper revolution was over, when they continued acting the parts long after the director had dropped the curtain that they got in trouble: “We were so carried away by our performance that we failed to see that the curtain had fallen and the carnival had ended” (42).

Taking a break from the harangue, Yarostan’s gives his  impressions of the group:

Vera Neis was witty and talked all the time.  She entertained with gossip and was always trying to convert people to the cayuse.

Adrian was a pin–drawn to the most powerful magnet.  For a while he followed Vera, then he followed Claude.

Jesna Zbrkova was warm and generous, often blindly so, but that generosity was greatly appreciated by Yarostan.

Marc Glavni was a student, Yarostan has no opinion of him.

Jan was described as hotheaded by Sophia.  Yarostan replies with this stunner: “That was how his executioners described him” (41).  Holy cow.  And when we learn more about his closeness with Jan’s family, that is a stunner.

Titus Zabran was a realist, considering this movement as a step to the next stage.

When Yarostan got out of prison the first time, he wasn’t yet broken.  He still wanted to fight.  He returned to their factory and he saw what had happened there: it had been run down, the quality of the printing was lower, nothing had been greased or painted in years.   And when he spoke to the union official, he was informed that he could not be rehired because he was a risk .  The foreman told them all that there’s corruption up and down the line.  But he should be happy not to be there because “factory life wasn’t for ‘political people'” (45).  And this would not be the only time people would think he was a politician.

After some time with no job, he went to look for Jan.  Jan’s family (he lived with his mother, father and sister in an old village that had not been affected at all by the “revolution”) invited him to stay.  And almost immediately, it is assumed that she will marry Jan’s sister.  And he does!  For she is Mirna! [That blew my mind a bit].

As for Sophia’s absolute dismissal of marriage, he also felt that way, until he met Mirna.  When he met her, he “was filled with enthusiasm again, filled with thoughts of living, of building a world together with these people, near this girl” (47).  And what’s wrong with that?  Did Sophia think “that marriage, wage labor and prisons had been abolished?” (42).

Jan helped Yarostan get a job as a bus driver (just like Jan’s father), under the alias Miran Sedlak.  But as soon as he started the job he had doubts.  Had prison domesticated him?  Was he drinking and enjoying the soup that he once complained about?

Yarostan didn’t give up the fight though, and he complained and agitated, and much like with the foreman at the factory, Mirna’s father took this for political aspirations: “You won’t be driving a bus for long” (52).  And yet despite all of this, he was very happy.  And although he tried to dissuade everyone from the inevitable marriage, no one believed his lame excuses (that he would be arrested again, and she would be bound to life to a ghost of a man).  It would be far worse for Mirna if he refused the wedding and left her as damaged goods in her village.

So the marriage went off without a problem.  They lived together happily, with Yarostan driving a bus.  And after the first year, Vesna was born [we have heard nothing else about this poor girl, that can’t bode well for her].

At last, Yarostan explains how he can write now, it’s not something he’s done (not even the excitement about Yara) but because “the city is waking up from a twenty-year long death-like sleep.  The people of this city are suddenly realizing  that …they’ve been building the walls that imprison them,” (55).

Speaking of Yara, Mr Ninovo, the neighbor (and spy) reported Yara to the police because of her role in the protest.  Yarostan knows he would have been arrested in the past, but this time, “an official came to the house.  He was extremely polite and he apologized for his visit.  He told us Mr. Ninovo had reported me and then he proceeded to warn us to beware of our neighbor telling us that Mr. Ninovo was a spiteful, envious and dangerous man” (57).

Yarostan concludes his letter bitterly, as if he was planning to terminate their acquaintance: “I wrote you because I wanted to explore the present, to probe its possibilities, to move beyond the past.  I didn’t write you in order to revive the past and certainly not to celebrate the events which had put an end to all communication, at least for me” (59).

Oh, and Mirna holds Sophia’s letter responsible for Yarostan’s 2nd imprisonment.

[Ouch].

Sophia is less than pleased with Yarostan’s letter. She opens with “Your letter was cruel” (59).  In fact, I can’t help but think that if I had received a letter as nasty as Yarostan’s I wouldn’t have even bothered to reply.  Of course, I am not Sophia.  Although Sophia does admit that maybe that was his intention:

Wouldn’t silence be the most appropriate response to your letter? That might be what you expect. You would have severed me from your life for good, and my silence would confirm the truth of your analysis. But I won’t keep silent! I won’t let our correspondence end where you ended it. Because you’re wrong (60).

I have to admit when I first began this book I though that one intention was to rekindle an old (or an untested) romance.  That’s the custom of so many epistolary novels (and in all those old Romantic stories, letters are the main expressions of love), that I assumed underneath the hostility was love.  Of course that proves to be false.  Yarostan is in love with Mirna, and expresses no feelings for Sophia. Although I was mildly satisfied to see Sophia state:

You wrote the first letter to one who had once been a friend, a comrade, and more: someone you had loved…. What I can’t understand is how you can treat me as if I’d been your enemy then, precisely during the moment when we loved each other. And we did love each other. Passionately. You can’t discard that. It’s already inscribed in time. You can’t take that love from me no matter how often you accuse me, exclude me or insult me. Because the person I loved is not the person who wrote those accusations. The person I loved was present in your letter, not in your statements about me but in your descriptions of  Mirna. I recognized your love for me in your love for Mirna (62).

This sentiment isn’t really followed up in the letter, and we haven’t yet heard Yarostan allude to this, but it makes me wonder….

Aside from that, Sophia thinks that Yarostan’s points are wrong.  Very wrong.  But Sophia won’t try to refute him point by point.  She just selects some of the most egregious errors.  He must realize that just because the struggle was put down, just because they were defeated,

In no way does it mean that the bosses and guards are the fruit of our victory and the realization of our intentions. The bosses and guards are what we fought against. And they won. Not because of us but in spite of us (61).

But it’s this defeat that is so important.  The new world could not have been built by the people who fought because they were defeated.

And in a fascinatingly emotional comment from Sophia, she admits to an affinity for the human race.  I say surprising because although she stands and fights for the workers, she seems to have very little concern for interpersonal, human relationships (she opposes marriage and doesn’t acknowledge the familial bond).  Nevertheless, she states.

If you raze the rest of us to the ground you may find yourself standing very high, Yarostan, but not in a human community (63).

And speaking of family, Sophia provides a bit more of a back story to her family.  Nachalo is her father and was Luisa’s first companion.  He had a previous wife and a daughter, named Margarita.  (Luisa was only a few years older than Margarita).  The three of them met George Alberts at a meeting.  He was killed when Sophia was 2.  The city was attacked and the three adults ran into the street.  Margarita was also wounded and died giving birth to Sabina (so Sophia and Sabina are not really sisters).

Sophia regrets telling Tina that they were arrested because they were related to Alberts, especially since Alberts himself was not arrested.   And she feels that it makes her memory sound less reliable.  And yet when Yarostan talks about puppet shows and other falsehoods, she knows that her memory is sound.  She cites an example unrelated to the “puppet” events.

She was a university teacher for a time.  And when a group of students came in trying to gain their support on diverse issues, the students saw through these future politicians and only a handful agreed to support them.  They were not so easily duped by the bosses.

Now, what about her first letter, 12 years ago?  Sophia asked her friend Lem Icel, who was going to be near Yarostan for an international conference, to drop off the letter for him .  When she saw Lem years later he said he’d been arrested when he delivered the letter.  Sophia didn’t believe any of it.  She still doesn’t believe she sent Lem or Yarostan to jail   (despite Mirna’s suspicions).  She especially didn’t believe Lem because his litany of horrors sounded too much like official propaganda.

Sophia herself had been arrested as well.  She was released after only a couple of days.  And when she got out of prison, Alberts moved Sophia, Sabina and Luisa to the new country where she lives now.  [The letter makes it sounds like the US (what with the love of baseball and the “land of gigantic objects and monstrous toys” (75)) but I don’t think it is (Cuba?  Japan?)].  But Sophia was not pleased with the move.  She was extremely hostile to Alberts and, in fact, was sick during the entire journey.  She even lost trust for Luisa.

Sabina on the other hand was thrilled and “jumped around like a monkey released from its cage” (75).

In the new house, she had a room to herself, which she felt was like a prison.  Neighbors came and asked why she and her sister were not in school.  (Nosy neighbors like Mr Ninovo are everywhere).  Sophia eventually caved and went to school, but Sabina refused. Alberts enrolled her in a private school which she never had to attend.

At first Sophia was horrified by school, but she eventually settled into it and began taking notes about everyone (with the hope of someday writing a book).  But one incident stood out as typical of her school experience: the teacher mis-copied information out of a math book onto the black board.  And the sums did not add up.  When Sophia pointed it out to him:

He divided each side by a different quantity and nonchalantly continued copying. I was furious. “Hey, you can’t do that!” I shouted.  “You wouldn’t have to do it if you had copied the right numbers out of the book!”  He turned red as a beet. “You Bolshies are too smart for your own good!” he shouted. The athlete then walked right up to me and slapped me. I screamed and he became as rigid as a board. Some students cheered him and shouted, “You show ‘er, coach!” (80).

It was on this day that Lem ran after her and said they were on the same side.  He was upset for her for what happened and felt she was a real comrade.  She was very suspicious at first and still thought him more silly than useful, but at least he was on her side.  But as they talked more, she realized his uselessness:

I don’t think we talked a great deal after our first encounter; at least I didn’t record any other conversations. And because he had been friendly to me when I had been completely alone, this travesty of a rebel, this pompous leech was to cling to me for much of the rest of my life (83).

And it was Yarostan who opened her eyes:

I don’t know if I need to mention this or if I’m being clear this time: if I hadn’t known you
I wouldn’t have seen through Lem. I might have seen him as he saw himself and as the official
mythology defined him: as a rebel, an insurgent (84).

From Lem she moved on to Ron Matthews.  He was a tough guy who hung around with three other punks.  (Lem called them “the lumpen” (which regardless of his uselessness is pretty funny).  The other students called Ron “The Commissar” (which he didn’t like).  Sophia approached them (in the parking lot) and played some smart-assed flirtation with Ron.  (He called her Soap-fee Natural).  They jibe with each other, and then he invites her back to school at midnight.  She offends him and he yells derogatory comments at her.  But she feels that Ron is a kindred spirit and the next day she apologizes.  And he says her name correctly.

They hang out a lot, Ron shows her around the town and the outlying areas (there’s a very nice scene where they camp by a lake [it reminded me a lot of 1984, of course a lot of the tone of book reminds me of 1984].  And they begin a romance.  She learns that he steals bikes (but not from kids who can’t afford a lock), repaints them and sells them.  Occasionally her keeps one for a while, and he and Sophia go for a ride in the country (the lake is where they consummate their relationship).  I enjoyed this lakeside scene especially because she finds the area fraught with peril, even though they are completely alone.  She also learns that his dad runs a luncheonette.

One night, Ron brought Sophia home and Ron’s father was waiting for them.  A fight began.  Ron’s father bullied them both and called Sophia a whore.  But Ron stood up to him until his father produced a gun.  Ron and Sophia left and fled to her house (where he was welcomed).  Ron stayed with them for a week.  Then he called his mother (Debbie) who said it was safe to come back.

Ron did return home and all was okay.  Then one night, Ron picked up Sophia in a car (his father’s).  He had taken the keys without asking.  So Ron and Sophia (and Sabina who had become inseparable with them) went to the beach.  Sophia became convinced that Sabin and Ron had had sex.  But no one puts her fears to rest.  Rather, Ron drives them to where the “other half” live.  And as they’re looking at the big houses, a couple of kids in a car chase them out of the area [who would have thought this book would have a car chase!].

Sabina is encouraging the race, while Sophia is terrified.  They race and threaten each other when soon enough, their car crashes into a parked car. Sabina and Ron take off on the run, while Sophia simply walks away from the wreck.  Ron and Sabina come back on bikes and ask her to hop on.  She refuses, preferring to walk the ten miles home.

And that was the end of Ron and Sophia.

As I walked away from his father’s wrecked car I knew that the Ron I had known, the Ron I had loved, had been an illusion. Ron may in fact have been a rebel but his rebellion wasn’t one I understood; his life’s project wasn’t mine. I had never known Ron (95).

Ron returned home with Sabina.  Ron’s dad thought Sabina was Sophia and apologized for the gun incident.  In the morning, Ron’s father realized the car was gone.  Ron’s father was convinced that Ron took the car, but Ron kept his mouth shut.

Sophia saw Ron a few times at school, but a short time after this incident, his mother was fired (she was a teacher there).  Sophia only saw Ron one more time.  He was arrested for robbery and Sophia went to the trial.

Around the same time, Sabina and Alberts fought furiously with Luisa and the two of them moved out, to a new house down the street.  Sophia thought it had something to do with her but it didn’t.  Shortly after that, Ron moved in with Sabina and Alberts.  And now it was just the two of them:

Luisa and I were alone and I hated it. I hated being where I was. I had become nothing and had done nothing. All I could see ahead of me was an endless desert and an inner void (97).

And yet despite this she used Luisa as a crutch, leaning on her as the only person left who had not betrayed her.

Shortly after Alberts left their house, Luisa got a job on an assembly line at an auto plant.  And she has been working there ever since.  She has tried to communicate with the other workers, but they shut her out.  (And the union?  Bah, nothing but an old boys club more concerned with picnics and baseball pitchers than worker’s rights).

So, all Luisa had was her so-called illusions.:

Without her dreams, without those illusions you now find so objectionable, she wouldn’t have looked for comrades who differed from the professional admirers of baseball pitchers and she wouldn’t have recognized them if she had met them. It seems to me that if Luisa had followed your advice and shed her illusions she would have confronted the same hopeless situation you faced during the days after your release (100).

So, for Yarostan to say these horrible things, as if she and Luisa had forgotten what had happened was just unfair.  And if Sophia was upset about the letter, imagine how Luisa felt.  But she dismissed it rather than taking it personally:

She dismissed your treatment of our revolutionary experience as illusory: “That’s nothing but a thinly disguised justification for the status quo: the present is real; opposition to it is illusory (98).

But despite what Luisa said, Sophia knew that Yarostan hadn’t turned reactionary:  “I knew you hadn’t turned against the dreams we had shared” (98).

Nevertheless, by Yarostan’s reasoning the only person who maintained standards was George Alberts.  He shed all his illusions:

And I know that he had neither dreams nor illusions when we settled here; he had neither principles nor scruples.  Alberts can’t always have been the unscrupulous person I knew, since Luisa respected him once and considered him a comrade. And Sabina, who is anything but uncritical, used to adore
him; she considered him a god, not only when she was a child, but until her late teens, long after she had ceased to depend on him financially (101).

Sophia learned that Luisa had kicked Alberts out of the house. Not because he had touched her (or Sabina) but because he helped to get nonconformist teachers fired.  So how could Yarostan imply that he was the only one who kept his word?

Yarostan’s letter just isn’t coherent:

By this point I’ve convinced myself that you didn’t mean half of what you said in your letter. There are too many contradictions. You must have let yourself be carried away by your own rhetoric. The only person I know who seems to have lived up to your demand that we shed our illusions is George Alberts, and he’s obviously not your model of a fully developed human being. Even if he were, neither Luisa nor I could have followed Alberts’ path; neither she nor I could have saved our skins by selling or repressing our insides. Why would you have written me in the first place if you had thought I had suppressed my wants and had become a commodity that walks and speaks? (103).

Sophia reveals that she did take another job, as a sociology professor three evenings a week.  In one of my favorite scenes so far, Sophia sat in the lecture hall like a student, waiting for the teacher to show up:

When one of the students got up to leave I asked him if he’d stay if someone in the room turned out to be the instructor. He didn’t answer but he stayed. I was of course suspect number one. Someone else then got up to leave. He was quite determined and quite angry. He said he was going home since the teacher, even if present, obviously wasn’t doing her job. I suggested that instead of going home he should report such a teacher to the school authorities, since he had paid his fee and wasn’t getting anything in return. Everyone seemed to agree so I added: “Whenever you see someone who isn’t doing his job you should report him to the authorities.”  At this point he lost his determination and returned to his seat. Of course at this point I had given myself away. I was asked if I intended to continue not doing my job and I said I did. An argument began. Some didn’t like to be cheated; when they drop a coin into a cigarette machine they want either the cigarettes or the coin returned. Others didn’t think it was right to be informers. The argument continued for half an hour after the class was scheduled to end (104).

I like this scene in part because I think that is an awesome way to start a class.  And I also think that such a method would garner great information and great discussions.  Of course, the fact that she never actually teaches  them anything means that they just spout their own theories over again (which is her point, and is sort of the argument against school).

Sophia ends her letter with a contrast between herself and her friend Daman (the one who got her the sociology job).  He is the one stuck, frozen in his past.

His one-time commitment has become his profession. His past experience is the subject of his lecture notes. He’s been teaching for three or four years now.  He has enacted the same revolution in his classroom year after year (106).

In the beginning of Sophia’s letter she wrote that she would not be shut out by Yarostan.  And despite her rather gruff tone about how she would write back anyway, the truth comes out near the end.  Yarostan’s letter was a life line for her:

Communication about such events is what I’ve missed ever since I’ve been here. Your letter brings me so close to realizing this communication — and then slams the door in my face.  Please don’t leave our relationship where your last letter left it. You would be killing something I’ve kept alive in an environment which tried repeatedly to kill it and failed. Please don’t drive me out of the single context in which I haven’t felt like an outsider. Please don’t put an end to the only real friendship I’ve succeeded in forming  (107).

Sophia signs the letter with love (something that Yarostan does not).

COMMENTS:

So this week’s reading has really upped the ante.  I’m thrilled how exciting this story is–sex, car chases, guns!  But what I really like is the absolute claustrophobia that surrounds everything.  The whole story feels repressed.  Even as each of them is revealing secrets, they are obviously hiding so much more.

With this exchange I find myself liking Sophia a lot more (I feel she has humanized herself) and I find Yarostan to be a bit obnoxious.  While he has enough experience to justify being so pompous, he is still pretty pompous (and rather mean to Luisa).

What is amazing me at this stage is that so much has been said and yet there is still so much left of the book!   They clearly aren’t going to argue the same points over and over (well, a little I’m sure), so what else will we learn?

This is great stuff.